A few years ago, Malachi Kirby, who plays Kunta Kinte in the new version of “Roots,” was given a box set of the original 1977 series by his mother, who told him he should watch it. It took about a year for the English actor of Jamaican descent to get around to it.

When he did, though, he ended up watching it all in one day, and it fired up his interest in his own roots.

That interest was heightened after taking the iconic role of Kunta Kinte in the new adaptation of “Roots,” which begins airing Memorial Day.

“I just took a DNA test a few weeks ago to find where I am really from,” Kirby says. “So while I’m born in London, and I’m second-generation Jamaican, my actual roots go back to West Africa. My genetic makeup is about 75 percent West African and about 20 percent South Asian and a bit of European.”

West Africa is also where Kunta Kinte, the character in Alex Haley’s 1976 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “Roots: The Saga of an American Family,” is from. The author believed he was a seventh-generation ancestor of the African man born around 1750. As a young adult, Kunta was captured by slavers and taken to America.

Like the original, the new four-part adaptation of “Roots” chronicles Kunta Kinte’s story and follows it through until after the Civil War, when his descendants are able to finally get their own land.

The original 1977 ABC miniseries was a landmark event that, perhaps for the first time on network TV, focused on the nation’s terrible legacy of slavery. More than an estimated 100 million people watched the finale. LeVar Burton, who played the young Kunta Kinte in the original, is one of the executive producers of the new version, which will be simulcast on the History, Lifetime and A&E channels.

While much of the 1977 miniseries is remembered fondly, since then there has been an enormous amount of scholarship about life in West Africa, the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the lives of enslaved people on American plantations during the 18th and 19th centuries.

“We have a lot more information now than we did 40 years ago to fill in a lot of the gaps that were missing in the original and to get to the truth of the matter,” says the 26-year-old Kirby.

The new adaptation brings a new understanding of Kunta Kinte. Instead of being from a remote village, he is believed to have been from a prominent trading city along the coast of Africa. For those interested, the network has provided more about the real history at Roots.History.com. It also offers topics to discuss and viewing resources, as well as suggestions for tracing your own ancestry. A tie-in book will also be available.

Indeed, Haley faced criticism about his work in some quarters at the time, but his book helped inspire some of the scholarship that followed.

Since the filmmakers were striving for accuracy, they hired a number of historical consultants for the project.

Emayatzy Corinealdi, who plays Belle, Kunta Kinte’s wife in slavery, says that as part of the preparation for her role, she listened to slave narratives collected in the Library of Congress.

“We have found new things about slavery in recent decades,” Corinealdi says, “which has given us a stronger understanding of how the institution of slavery has affected our country.”

The actress, who was recently seen in “Miles Ahead,” points out there’s a whole generation that hasn’t seen “Roots,” like her nieces and nephews.

“For me, it is important to understand the strides that we have made and see how much further we have to go,” she says. “So it will be interesting for them to see this and have an understanding of the Black Lives Matter movement.”

The new version of “Roots” also stars Laurence Fishburne as Haley and Forest Whitaker as Fiddler, along with Anika Noni Rose, Anna Paquin, the rapper T.I., Matthew Goode, Derek Luke and James Purefoy.

The directors for the four nights were Bruce Beresford, Thomas Carter, Phillip Noyce and Mario Van Peebles. Questlove of the band “Roots” served as executive music producer.

For Kirby and Corinealdi, the experience of making the miniseries wasn’t just another acting job but something more personal.

Though she never experienced the type of racism inflicted upon her character of Belle, Corinealdi says acting in some of those scenes was “like an arrow to your heart.”

“No moment was sacred for Belle, even at her own wedding; so there was never any safety for her,” the actress says. “They could never be comfortable knowing one of their family could be sold at any time.”

In playing Kunta Kinte, Kirby felt it was important “to get as close to the truth of the matter” as he could.

The scene of the young African man being whipped until he said his slave name of Toby — well-remembered from the original and even more graphic in the new one — was particularly emotionally draining for Kirby, though he is quick to point out that it was all acting.

“It wasn’t the pain of being whipped,” says the actor. “It was the pain of having your identity beaten out of you.”

It is something the actor says he understands, observing: “My roots go back to West Africa, but my last name is Kirby, which is not an African name.”

He credits Burton with helping him get through the whipping scene by reminding the actor that Kunta emerges from his trials “a mighty man” who will lead his people.

“LeVar has been very encouraging and has been giving me these nuggets of wisdom,” Kirby says.

The new “Roots” spends less time on the white people’s story than the original, and while the brutality of slavery is graphically shown, there is more of an emphasis on what Kunta and the others did not only to survive slavery but to maintain their own identity and integrity.

For Kirby, the DNA testing was only part of his journey. At the moment, he can only trace his roots to his Jamaican grandparents, but he is trying to find out more about his ancestry. He says he learned so much from making “Roots.”

“I think the most important thing,” he says, “was the empowerment you have from knowing who you are.”

Rob Lowman began at the L.A. Daily News working in editing positions on the news side, including working on Page 1 the day the L.A. Riots began in 1992. In 1993, he made the move to features, and in 1995 became the Entertainment Editor for 15 years. He returned to writing full time in 2010. Throughout his career he has interviewed a wide range of celebrities in the arts. The list includes the likes of Denzel Washington and Clint Eastwood to Kristin Stewart and Emma Stone in Hollywood; classical figures like Yo Yo Ma and Gustavo Dudamel to pop stars like Norah Jones, Milly Cyrus and Madonna; and authors such as Joseph Heller, John Irving and Lee Child. Rob has covered theater, dance and the fine arts as well as reviewing film, TV and stage. He has also covered award shows and written news stories related to the entertainment business. A longtime resident of Santa Clarita, Rob is still working on his first more-than-30-year marriage, has three grown children (all with master's degrees) and five guitars.

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